Grace left Whale Beach as the waves were crashing in on the headlands and the wash was spreading out across the sand. The swell rolled in, its faint streaks of white water glimmering in the pre-dawn darkness. She was heading home, in her mind choosing the day’s outfit. She phoned in to check if there were any messages on her answering machine and because of what she heard recorded there did not go home but drove straight to work instead. In the office sleepy people, the first arrivals, were setting polystyrene cups of steaming coffee on their desks. She knocked on Harrigan’s door where he was sitting working out the day’s business with Trevor and Ian. He looked up, unable to prevent himself from taking in the full sight of her without make-up and in casual dress finished off with a worn leather jacket. She was wearing the midriff and navel look, as he called it. He tried not to look at the bare skin between her too short T-shirt and the line of her jeans.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ she said to him.
‘You’re dressed for work, are you? What is it?’
He was frowning. He himself was casually dressed, which meant that he was without his garrotte for the day, a tie.
‘I haven’t been home yet to get dressed,’ she replied. ‘This was on my answering machine when I rang in this morning to check.’
As he took her phone, Harrigan had the pleasure of watching Ian ogle Grace and grin salaciously behind her back. He listened to the message before passing it on to Trevor and Ian in turn. The first sounds of the recording were of silence, and then of someone moving, and then of a voice, slurred and slow.
‘Is that that woman, Grace? The one who talked to me? It’s Greggie.
I’m ringing to tell you that I’m flying at the moment. And I’m flying because I want to. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this good in my life.
Because I’m on my way out and no one can do anything to stop me and I’m free now. And I’ve never felt happier in my life. I just feel that I’m going to sleep. He won’t like that because I’m fucking it up for him, serve him fucking right. I just wanted to say — you’ve got to understand her. The Firewall, that is. She wouldn’t want me saying who she is. I rang her but she’s got her phone off so I can’t say goodbye. Will you do that for me? If you do give a shit like you say you do. Just say I wanted to say goodbye to her. She’s got her reasons, you need to talk her round, just talk to her. She’s not like him, you remember that.’
There was a faint clink as the phone was turned off. After a short break a mechanical voice read out: ‘Tuesday, 18 July, 3:59 a.m.’
‘That was our witness,’ Harrigan said. ‘Goodbye, Greggie. Poor bloody kid.’
He sat there expressionless, tapping at the desk, otherwise unmoving. He radiated sufficient tension to render everyone else in the room momentarily silent.
‘He. Him. Who’s that?’ Ian asked, giving the phone back to Grace.
‘Who do you think? Our friendly neighbourhood everyone’s-my-mate community refuge preacher from the New Life Ministries. I’ll lay you odds,’ Harrigan replied.
‘“I’m fucking it up for him”,’ Trevor repeated. ‘He didn’t want him dead.’
‘Just not yet, is all that means.’
‘That was loyalty, wasn’t it?’ Grace said. ‘He wasn’t going to tell us who she is, not even then.’
Harrigan looked at her from across his desk.
‘You didn’t hear that message when it came through? Why didn’t you answer your phone? Why wait till now to share it with us?’
‘It’s like I said. I’ve only just heard it.’ There was a brief silence.
Harrigan was still waiting. ‘I’d turned my mobile off. It couldn’t ring through,’ she said.
‘You weren’t home, you turned your mobile off. You weren’t contactable.’ He felt the back of his neck burn.
‘I had my beeper with me.’
‘That’s not good enough. No, it’s worse than that, it’s bloody useless. You knew that boy had your number, you gave it to him yourself. If you’d had your phone on, you could have talked to him.
You could have asked him where he was, maybe we could have done something for him, we could have traced the call. If everyone else can manage it, I don’t see why you can’t.’
She looked back at him stony-faced; he turned to Ian. ‘Get on to that and check out where that call came from. See what you can trace.’
Ian got to his feet. ‘Can I get Jeffo on to that? Because if I do it, I won’t have time to — ’
‘Jeffo doesn’t know his fig from his date.’ Harrigan’s voice was short to say the least. ‘You do it.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Grace said, angrily. ‘I can do that.’
‘Then get on with it.’ Harrigan knew his face was blood red. ‘And some time today, get changed!’
She gave him one more glance and then walked out of his office, Ian following her.
‘Take it easy, mate,’ Trevor said quietly to Harrigan after they had both gone. ‘Watch your blood pressure. We need you to protect us from Marvin.’
Harrigan did not immediately reply. He was watching Grace pull her long brown hair into a ponytail as she stood by her desk talking to Ian, and wondering who she had been making herself available to at four in the morning. She hadn’t been interested in his company.
‘Don’t worry about it. All I need is some fresh air and a change of scenery,’ he said and collecting his coat went in search of both.
How are u dad?
Harrigan should have expected his son to take the initiative. He looked at the computer screen.
‘How are you, more to the point?’ he asked.
I’m okay dad I’m still here I don’t know that I want 2 talk 2 muchabout wot happened yesterday U didn’t tell me how u were
‘I’m fine.’
U don’t look it
Harrigan sat down beside his son. He almost smiled. He did not quite know what to say. He hadn’t come here to talk about women in general, only one in particular. A population of one that did not include Grace. He looked from the screen to his son.
‘You love her.’ It was something he felt he had to say.
She knows what I look like She says she loves me I believe her Stillthink she does
Harrigan waited.
Thought she’d understand but she didn’t She didn’t listen I don’tknow Maybe she’ll come back and talk 2 me again
‘She owes it to you, Toby. You’ve given her more than anyone else has.’
His son flickered his good hand, that ‘oh yeah’ gesture.
‘Why her, Toby? I know you don’t want to talk about it. But do you want to tell me that much, so I understand?’
Why do u think??? Because She talked 2 me I can’t do anything dadLike I tell everyone I’m a turtle on its back That’s me Girls don’t talk2 me They don’t even want 2 look at me Why would they want 2 Shedid She knew what I looked like amp; she didn’t care I said 2 her we’reboth fucking cripples She said yes we are amp; we are 2 dad That’s why
‘You aren’t like her, Toby. You couldn’t even think about doing something like that.’
I might U don’t know I’m locked in this chair She’s locked in herhead That’s why she did wot she did Don’t know wot I’d do if I wasn’tin a chair
‘You live in the real world. She doesn’t.’
I live in my head dad I live in a screen Nowhere else I can gowithout someone helping me
‘You don’t just live through a screen. You’ve got me for the rest of my life. You’ve got Ronnie, you’ve got Carolyn, there’s your cousins.
They love you, mate. You can’t say we haven’t shown that.’
Not the point, is it, dad? Wot girl wants 2 have sex with me????
Harrigan sat there silent.
‘There are alternatives,’ he said finally.
Are there?
‘Yeah.’
Pay someone u mean??? Is that what u did?
‘No, it wasn’t,’ he said eventually.
Wot did u do?
‘I had a girlfriend. First time we did it, we were on the back seat of her brother’s car. In the garage. He was a petrol-head too, I don’t know if he ever found out what happened to the upholstery. God, it was uncomfortable.’
Better than 0
In retrospect, not so very much. Things had improved after his girlfriend, through some obscure arrangement, had borrowed the keys to the flat her university student sister shared with a moving company of friends.
‘It’s whatever you want, Toby. You just have to ask me and I will organise what you want. That’s all you have to do.’
Not someone who cares about me
‘Toby, if you just ask me, I will do the very best I can for you. There are people out there who are better than others. I can find them for you.’
Toby flickered ‘oh, yeah’ with his good hand once again. Harrigan stood up.
‘I have to go back to work now,’ he said. ‘I have to be somewhere.
If you want anything, you just ask me. You tell me what you want.’
U know what I’m going 2 do??? I’m going out looking for herMaybe she’ll talk 2 me again
‘Maybe she will. In the meantime, you remember — I’m here if you want anything.’
Yeah okay dad Don’t worry so much
If it was what Toby wanted, the possibility of paying someone for sex had crossed Harrigan’s mind on several occasions before. It was not something he viewed with any great satisfaction. The idea that there would be a negotiated price to pay filled him with distaste; the idea had always left him with that feeling. People smiled at you when they took your money, they manipulated you whether you paid them or they paid you. Either way they bought you out. It was just that for Toby, it was either do that or leave him to pictures on the Net, that was just the way things were. You don’t want to worry about it too much, Toby. Decent women are like hen’s teeth and if the two of you just want to unwind, who gives a shit what they do with their lives?
What does it matter? Just think about it like that.
Harrigan walked out into the bright morning feeling a strong sense of bleakness and the need for solitude. It wasn’t something he had the time to indulge in just now. He had places to go.
Harrigan parked near the New Life Ministries Temple as the first prayer meeting for the day was about to start. A small crowd had gathered in the street outside, waiting for the doors to open, just as they might have done when films were shown here. Once the picture theatre had closed, it might have become a suburban boxing ring, the kind his father had taken him to when he was a boy. Later still, they might have held dog or cock fights here. He thought of the soiled bank notes passing from hand to hand among the watchers as the animals were set against each other in the pit.
The preacher, wearing a cheap dark suit and tie, opened the doors to the church and welcomed the crowd in. ‘I am so pleased you could come,’ he said to each of the newcomers. ‘Good to see you again,’ to the regulars. He knew each one of them by name, and if he did not, he made sure they told him who they were. Harrigan was the last to present himself.
‘Paul. This is a surprise. Good morning. Are you here to tell me you’ve found Greg?’
‘No, Graeme, I’m afraid I have to say we haven’t. But we’re still out there looking for him. I guess he hasn’t come back here or you would have let us know. You haven’t seen him at all? Talked to him?’
What do you know, Harrigan thought as he watched him.
‘No, he hasn’t come home, unfortunately,’ the man replied, words Harrigan could read any way he wished. ‘I always live in hope but so far I am without that singular reward. So you are here for our prayer meeting?’
‘I thought I’d like to come along since you were generous enough to invite me. You don’t mind if I sit in?’
‘I’m sure we’ll be very happy to have you amongst us, Paul. There’s no reason why we should not. You won’t mind if I ask you to participate? It’s something I ask of everyone who comes here. My door is open to everyone provided they come with an equally open heart.’
It could hardly be worse than his monthly management meetings at Area Command with the Tooth.
‘Happy to,’ he replied.
‘Please, come in.’
He followed the preacher through double glass doors into a tiny foyer and then into the auditorium where the sound of his footsteps echoed and the room was bright with unshaded lights. The preacher locked the glass doors to the street and then closed and locked two thick wooden fire doors between the foyer and the auditorium.
Harrigan noticed this with some surprise.
‘Don’t you let your latecomers in, Graeme?’
‘There is only a very narrow opening for us in this world, Paul.
People must come on time or they will be shut out.’
Abandon all hope, Harrigan thought ironically, glancing at the solid barrier the doors formed against the outside world. His backup would have a hard time getting in here. He hoped he wouldn’t need them.
The congregation sat in chairs arranged in wide concentric circles like the white stubby petals of a plastic flower. There was a song sheet on each chair. Harrigan took a seat at the back, near the door, watching. There were more people at this gathering than he would have expected, they had filled the rows to brimming. Families, men with their wives and children, people he assumed were unemployed since it was a work day. Older couples in cheap clothes. Individuals, a man in his late twenties, his features sharp and protruding, his skin the colour of ageing milk, twisting his long hands together. An older woman with grey square-cut hair, in a sombre suit and a pink blouse buttoned to the neck. A drab woman of about forty-five with large glasses and wearing a blue tracksuit. People you would barely notice in any crowd. Perhaps he should have sent Trevor down there after all; he knew that his 2IC went to mass regularly with his partner, a fact which had surprised Harrigan when he had first found it out. Perhaps Trev would have understood these people better, whoever they were.
Harrigan had always gone to church in the company of women: his beautiful mother, his hard-faced aunt and, until they had rebelled, his two sisters, with himself in the middle, the loved child. His father’s absence had been pure defiance against the church and, Harrigan thought now at a distance of years, this all-enclosing regiment of women and, as Jim Harrigan saw it, their dotage on his son. Like his father, Harrigan had lost faith a long time ago. When he was a small boy, it had a magic for him. He remembered walking up the hill to church on Sunday morning and looking up at the high steeple of St Augustine’s climbing into the sky. He thought it was beautiful. In the church, he had been fascinated by the statues of Mary and Jesus on either side of the white wedding-cake altar, imagining them coming to life, Jesus reaching out his hand, Mary smiling. Visions of Bible stories had filled his head, brightly coloured images that he had taken from the picture books he used to read. Visions which had strangely and paradoxically died — over time, it had taken time — in the rigours of his adolescent education at St Ignatius. The thoroughgoing arguments he worked through diligently in class had turned the words to ash on the page; words were all they were. After this he had gone through the motions, had become a stranger in that particular world. Someone perfectly in disguise but in reality a double agent, something he had been ever since. Any residual belief had been erased by his mother’s death. Almost. When you live with images for that long, they are burned onto the skin from the inside out. They still hold on to you, if only in memory, like everything that comes out of the past.
In this cold and ugly hall, the people were subdued, waiting. There was no need for the preacher to call for quiet. He stood at the centre of the inner circle, at the centre of the seated crowd.
‘Friends,’ he said into the silence, ‘today we are fortunate enough to have some new companions among us. People who, like yourselves, want to find the way to redemption and truth, to a lasting peace of mind. So I would like to ask our new companions to stand up and introduce themselves and tell us why they have come today. Perhaps we could start with you, Martin. You say your wife left you. Do you want to tell us about it?’
Following this initial invitation, people stood one after another to tell stories of intimate and scarifying detail to a room filled with strangers. Harrigan himself listened and waited. He spent his working days with people who were either professional liars or wanted to strip themselves naked like this. On the whole, he preferred the liars. Their agenda were easier to detect.
‘I’m Paul Harrigan,’ he said, when his turn came. ‘I’m here as someone who worries about the fate of our young people. I wanted to see what you might have to offer them, Graeme. Whether it’s some way of life which might give them more hope for the future than many of them seem to have today. I meet a lot of them in my work. I was listening to one of them talk about that just this morning. I wonder what his fate will be.’
‘That’s very admirable, Paul. Yes, our present world destroys all hope, does it not? Do you have children of your own?’
‘I’d like to keep that to myself. This is about me, not anyone else.’
There was a rustle of surprise. The preacher smiled.
‘Normally we have no secrets in this room, Paul. It’s a condition of entry here, as I thought I had told you. But if that is how you see it.
Would you like to tell us what you do for a living?’
‘I’m a law enforcement officer.’
One way of announcing you’re a fucking walloper, as his father had always put it.
‘Thank you, Paul. I don’t think we have any other policemen here today, although we have had in the past. We’ll begin now. Bronwyn?’
In a wholly unexpected move, the woman in the blue tracksuit walked to the back of the auditorium and extinguished the lights.
Harrigan found himself sitting in complete blackness. He became still, listening and waiting, a prickle of apprehension at the back of his neck. There was the collective noise of those in the room breathing, and then a shuffling, scraping noise, the sound of someone who had become disorientated and had dropped something. In the darkness, there was the suspension of any sense of place. Then a woman’s ghostly and untrained voice was heard, singing: Praise you the Lord in the heavens,
Praise him in the heights,
Praise him all his angels,
Praise him all you stars of light,
Praise him all who live in darkness,
Praise him all who dwell in day,
Let them praise the name of the Lord.
There was silence. Then Harrigan heard the preacher’s voice, disembodied and echoing against the high ceilings of the hall: ‘We are in the darkness, you and I. Come with me and I will show you the way to the light.’
As he spoke an image began to take shape slowly on the screen at the back of the hall: a figure in a long white robe, seven small glittering stars balanced over his outstretched hands. The preacher stood in silhouette against this image, his shadowed face edged with light. Pale wall lights appeared around the auditorium, illuminating the faces of the watching congregation.
‘Welcome to you all, my blood brothers and sisters in Christ. Please stand and link hands,’ he said. There was a rustle as each person took the other’s hand. Harrigan grasped the hand of an elderly man on one side and a woman of indeterminate age with vague blue eyes on the other. ‘As we stand here on the edge of eternity, I ask you to remember this, my brothers and sisters. You and I are one flesh, one body. Yes, and we love each other, as parent and child, brother and sister, so we love. Close your eyes. Think on this. We are as one. Repeat after me.
We are as one.’
‘We are as one.’ The response came strongly, fully voiced.
‘We are as one,’ the preacher said again.
‘We are as one,’ the crowd responded.
‘We are as one.’
‘We are as one!’
In the shadow and light, a sense of anticipation continued to grow.
Harrigan, perhaps the sole person in the room who had not closed his eyes as requested, glanced from one person to the next, and then to the preacher. The preacher was also open-eyed and watching, looking at him directly or so it seemed. He gave the impression that everyone in the room was within his sight.
‘Please be seated,’ he said.
There was another rustle as the participants let go of each other’s hands and sat down again. The preacher began to speak without emphasis, almost without emotion, moving from one person to the next in the circles of chairs. Those present turned their heads to watch him, straining towards him. His voice took on the quality of a chant, unremitting and at an even tempo.
‘We know, do we not, that Jesus loves us, even beyond death. His blood is the blood of life, one drop of it has the power to redeem us.
To wash us all clean of the grievous weight of life. That is the depth of his love. But do we return that love?’
He stopped in front of the man who spoken about the breakdown of his marriage. ‘I ask you this, Martin. Do you cry aloud in the night for God’s love? No?’
The preacher leaned towards the man and spoke softly, although his voice was heard throughout the hall. ‘You must. You must hunger beyond life for the love that God can give you. Until that hunger consumes you, you will never be satisfied. No one …’ He paused and stood upright, then continued moving. The silence was intense. ‘… no one can deny God and live. Do, and in your heart there will be only death. And then? Oh, my friends, I only tell you this, these are the end-times and Jesus will come for you now on any day, at any hour. He will come with terrible speed and there will be no time for you to say, Oh, I must do that before I go. When we push open these doors to the streets, will the storms that presage the end of the world be raging outside? How do we know they will not? In the next day, the next hour, will it be you who stands on the bridge to all eternity with the abyss of Hell beneath you? Will there be a way across for you? Then the fear of God will come to you, and oh, yes, it will raise up the hairs on your head and a cold black wind will drive you down to Hell for all eternity, to a world without end.’
As he listened, Harrigan had the strange sensation of feeling cold down his spine. That needle along his backbone was genuine fear. It was the second time the preacher had had this effect on him. He glanced at others around him, some of whom sat with open mouths, waiting on every word.
‘But fear not,’ the preacher became soft and soothing. ‘No, fear not, my brothers and sisters. Because you will stand before God and say: I fought against the unnatural and the perverse. I stood between the murderer and the unborn. Satan walked abroad in the world but I defied him. Remember the words of Saint John of the Revelation. Be you faithful unto death and I will give you a crown of life. Now, I know you will reach into your hearts and each of you will find in there the love that is God and the strength to go out and to do His work.’
He returned to stand in the centre of the circle and there was a release of breath, a communal sigh.
‘I ask of you now — tell us all, my brothers and sisters, what is it that you will do that will bring you forward as Christ’s witness, that will place you in the company of the saved at the end of time? Paul.
You are new to us today. What will you do?’
Curiously Harrigan heard his name called almost with relief. As he stood up the crowd turned to look at him, their faces still partially shadowed in the half dark like the preacher’s. Others among them would have preferred to have been chosen. They were hungry to speak, he could see it in their faces.
‘Like you say, I’m here for the first time. Why don’t you tell me what you think I should do?’
‘Go and close down an abortion mill today. That’s what the police should be doing,’ the man with creamy skin said, seated near the centre of the circle and smiling aggressively. His face was almost silver in the light.
‘Fight against those things which are an abomination in God’s sight,’ the preacher replied without hesitation, ignoring the man who had spoken. ‘You, Paul, are privileged, you have the force of the state behind you. We do not. We stand here as a lone voice. We exercise no earthly power. And if you come here, Paul, as you say you do, seeking hope, why have you not done more with the powers vested in you already? Are you afraid to? Or will you not answer me?’
‘I work within the law, Graeme. I have to.’
He sat down.
‘Abortion is against the law.’ The man with creamy skin spoke again.
‘Indeed it is. But no one wants the law enforced, so people flout it without fear,’ the preacher said. ‘So we protest. But unlike you, Paul, none of us need fear anything from anyone. Even if protest is all we have. With our protest, we have God’s backing. Nothing can stand against that.’
‘I have done that. I have protested,’ said the woman in the dark suit, louder than everyone else among the shouted responses. ‘Every day I know the Minister for Health is going to be out in public somewhere, I’m waiting for her. Wherever she goes, I’m behind her. As long as she allows the unborn children of this state to be murdered, I’ll be there. I’ve told her what she is.’
‘I write to the politicians,’ the man with creamy skin said. ‘I tell them that what’s happening in Australia is a sin against God. I say to them, there’s no such thing as a gay lifestyle, it’s a deathstyle, it corrupts everything it touches. But what do they do about it? Nothing.
They don’t even write back to me.’
Harrigan considered it was just as well that he hadn’t sent Trevor down here.
‘None of that is enough,’ said the woman who had sung, Bronwyn.
She had been standing at the back of the hall throughout proceedings, not far from where Harrigan sat, next to a small table on which stood a projector. ‘We have to give everything we have.’
‘What does that mean — giving everything you have?’ Harrigan asked. ‘How far do you have to go?’
She looked at him a little startled, a plumpish figure with long slightly curling hair and wearing a silver medal of a baby’s tiny feet around her neck.
‘We must go as far as it’s possible to go,’ she replied quietly. ‘Here, we have nothing to lose. Those who stand against us only make us stronger. Because we have no ties, no obligations other than to God, there is nothing anyone can take from us. The only obligation you can ever have is the one you have to Him and you have to do anything that is necessary to fulfil that.’
‘I’ll tell you what it means,’ the pale man said. ‘The way things are today, you have to make a choice. You have to fight back. And if people get jack of it so much that they start to use force, then the only people who’ll be surprised are the ones who never listened in the first place.’
‘But you have to understand, we wouldn’t do that because we wanted to. We accept the role given to us by God. We’re not about death. We’re about life. We’re not the killers,’ Bronwyn said. ‘But the doctors in the family planning clinics are. And that’s what being homosexual means. They infect everything, they’re diseased, they’re destroyers. We offer life. But we keep being attacked because we’re the only ones brave enough to stand up and say so.’
There was a waiting silence as she spoke. She moved forward into the circle, her voice carrying throughout the auditorium in the colourless light. ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Everyone here believes that. The only law we are obliged to obey is God’s. And we must obey that law, no matter what we face. Graeme taught us that.’
‘Bronwyn,’ the preacher said, ‘it’s time to move on. If you could change the slide?’
The figure with seven stars above his outstretched hand disappeared; the image of a simple white-robed figure, which Harrigan assumed to be a depiction of Christ, took its place. It bore no relationship to the complex images he had studied and lived with throughout his boyhood.
‘Perhaps we should return to ourselves and to the present now, and speak of the peace that can be found from faith in God. You, Martin,’
the preacher spoke to the divorced man, ‘remember that while you are here, you are among your family. Speak to us now about what is in your heart.’
Harrigan sat for another hour while those around him detailed and wept over their personal heartbreaks, until the preacher said at last,
‘Bronwyn, would you open the doors, please.’
The main lights flickered on, the doors were opened. Glancing out onto the inner city street, Harrigan’s first sight of the outside light gave him a sense of disorientation, it appeared as something momentarily less real than the shadows in the dark room. The congregation filed out, the preacher said goodbye to each one and shook their hands as they went. Fredericksen, Harrigan noted with some surprise, did not ask his congregation for any money. He watched as the preacher shook the divorced man’s hand and said he looked forward to seeing him again.
‘You’ve given me heart,’ the man replied.
Harrigan was the last one out of the hall. The preacher offered him his hand and he shook it against his wishes, feeling that same weak, sliding grip.
‘Paul,’ the preacher said, ‘thank you for joining in the way you did today. I hope you didn’t find our approach to things here too confronting. But there is so much in the world these days against which we need to speak out. I speak from the heart, I’m afraid; it’s got me into trouble before today. I do hope we’ll see you here again.’
Harrigan wondered if he should question whether there was a point to the invitation, if the world was likely to end in the very near future.
‘It was no problem, me being here, Graeme. Thank you for the insight. I notice you didn’t take up a collection.’
‘No. No one who comes here has any money. I don’t take what little my people have. Why? Would you like to make a contribution? We’d certainly be most grateful.’
‘I wanted to thank you for your generosity. It’s unusual these days.
Just as a matter of interest — are these people your people? Is that how they see themselves?’
‘Yes, they are. They come to me because I am the only one who takes the trouble to care about them. I show them the way to peace of heart. The way Christ did. He went out to the lepers, the sick, the outcast and he offered them life. You must try and understand me, Paul. I have said to you that I love people and that is true. I am someone who is very sensitive to the needs of others. I can see into the heart. These people — they’re ordinary people, lost people, looking for hope. Like you. You’re not a happy man, Paul. I can see that. If you came here to me and genuinely opened your heart, I would find you happiness. I would give you hope.’
‘You know, Graeme, even if that was true, I’d have to say that was my problem, not yours, and I don’t think I’d care to share it with you.
I’ll see you again. When I find Greg. Because I do intend to find him.
That’s a promise.’
‘I don’t doubt that. I hope indeed you find him very soon,’ the preacher replied, smiling.
Sydney air had never smelled quite so sweet to Harrigan as when he stepped out onto the street. As he drove away, he turned off his recording device and called Trevor.
‘How’d it go?’ Trevor asked.
‘They owe me more money after that, Trev,’ Harrigan replied. ‘I’m on my way back in now.’
‘See you when you get here. We’ll be ready to go for this afternoon.
We’re just waiting for the film.’
‘All right. I’ll be there shortly.’
Harrigan drove through the slow traffic considering what he had just seen. He could call it cheap theatrics, ask whether — for the preacher — it was a case of stamina or addiction, and question who fed off who, but it would make no difference. The preacher’s congregation believed in the man; the man believed in himself. Some of those people were capable of being dangerous, but how dangerous? Nuisances and harassers rather than arsonists and murderers. How much was just talk? The preacher had let his congregation put themselves on display and they had willingly done so. He had not displayed himself, he had made no threats, barely offered an opinion that you could not hear any day from the shock jocks on the radio.
Harrigan drove back into the city, deep in thought. In the houses across the street from the Temple, the backup officers collected their belongings and left by the back way. The photographers and surveillance teams remained in place, watching everyone who came and went, twenty-four hours a day.